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Computers & Internet 2004
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100 Excel Hacks for every day Excel problems! Aimed at the intermediate+ power user.
As large number of hacks in this book require working examples, we have included these in the hope that they will help owners of Excel Hacks save time by copying working examples directly into their own Excel Workbooks.
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You may also wish to browse our list of Frequently Asked Questions on Excel. For many more free Excel Workbook Downloads, please go to Free Excel Downloads 1, Free Excel Downloads 2, Free Excel Downloads 3
Excel Hacks Book Description
If you think that getting creative with Excel means the underhanded tweaking of numbers, think again. Excel Hacks shows even the most experienced users how to do things with Excel they might never have thought of doing--and lets them have a little fun while they're at it.
Microsoft Excel is not just the dominant spreadsheet in the world; it's also one of the most popular applications ever created. Its success lies not only in its power and flexibility, but also in its streamlined, familiar interface that casually conceals its considerable capabilities. You don't need to know everything that Excel can do in order to use it effectively, but if you're like the millions of Excel power users looking to improve productivity, then Excel Hacks will show you a wide variety of Excel tasks you can put to use, most of which are off the beaten path.
With this book, Excel power users can bring a hacker's creative approach to both common and uncommon Excel topics--"hackers" in this sense being those who like to tinker with technology to improve it. The "100 Industrial Strength Tips and Tools" in Excel Hacks include little known "backdoor" adjustments for everything from reducing workbook and worksheet frustration to hacking built-in features such as pivot tables, charts, formulas and functions, and even the macro language.
This resourceful roll-up-your-sleeves guide is for intermediate to advanced Excel users eager to explore new ways to make Excel do things--from data analysis to worksheet management to import/export--that you never thought possible. Excel Hacks will help you increase productivity with Excel and give you hours of "hacking" enjoyment along the way.Reviews (good or bad) updated weekly in no particular oder
More Book Reviews of 100 Excel hacks >>
"'Excel Hacks: 100 Industrial-Strength Tips & Tools' by David & Raina Hawley, shows readers how to do more, and how to do things better, with the market-leading spreadsheet...I consider myself an expert user, working with spreadsheets for over twenty years and teaching classes in Excel and 1-2-3, yet I was still able to learn a lot from this book."
--Bruce Kratofil, May 2004, Blogcritics.org
http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/05/12/124822.php
"Excel isn't just for accountants anymore and the book shows how to use it for other things. The book is worth the investment for anyone who uses Excel. Make [Excel] break a sweat with these hacks and have fun doing it."
--Meryl.net, May 2004
http://www.meryl.net/articles/archives/002232.php
"This book invites us to burrow beneath the surface [of Excel] to discover features that can bring on great rewards."
--Deccan Herald, May 2004
http://www.deccanherald.com/deccanherald/may192004/snt10.asp
saving me time and frustration, April 14, 2004
Reviewer: A reader from Winston-Salem, NCThis is a very useful guide to overcoming and avoiding irritations. Using Excel can be infuriating, but it's often the most convenient software to use. This book certainly increases my confidence and reduces my dread. For example, there are lots of tips on how to streamline your work and avoid repetitive tasks.
It goes far beyond that, though, and advises you how to personalize your workspace and use what I would call "magic" to make my work go more smoothly. Although it isn't the most exciting writing style, the information works and improves my Excel experience. I'm so much less frustrated when working with my data sets!
Beyond the Ordinary
2004-04-25 13:13:49 MichaelRating:This book is fantastic! I just made it through 17 of the 100 industrial strength tips included in this book and I'm very impressed. This will be an enormous help in improving my Excel skills. I can't wait to get through the other 83.
Excellent book - One working hack makes it worth the money
2004-11-12 04:30:45 graemeaustinRating:
I bought this book about a month ago as I was fed up with Excel's limitations - and I needed to know what would work on PCs and Macs. This book has saved me time (& hence money).The 2 that have worked so far for me are Hack #42 (dynamic named ranges) and #32 (cell formatting).
I understand that the cell formatting one is probably buried somewhere in the so-called documentation from MS but I never found it. And dynamic named ranges have so many different uses, I can't begin to list them all - list management, more efficiently run macros using pre-determined ranges etc.
There's about another dozen hacks which are now at the back of my head and the next time I update more workbooks, they will come into play.
O'Reilly & Associates has published a new book titled; "Excel Hacks" . The book, written by David and Raina Hawley, is a guide for maximizing a users potential using the ever popular app Microsoft Excel............... The Mac Observer
With this book, Excel power users can bring a hacker's creative approach to both common and uncommon Excel topics--"hackers"............ Codes-Sources.Com
Reviewer: Dimiter Gerensky-Greene (see more about me) from Arlington, Virginia United States
If you are one of the million users of MS Office, and had any use for numbers, you would hve used, with no doubt, MS Excel. Which of course has not made you any more productive, as much as MS would like us all to believe.
Now that you have Excel installed, you might as well use its power. With the help of two awesome Australians who share willingly their years of experience with Excel and VBA, you can too become a pro, at least as far as spreadsheets are concerned.
Here is a selection of some of the more interesting and handy topics and hacks covered:
- Lock and protect cells containing formulas
- Tie custom toolbars to a particular workbook
- Remove phantom workbook links
- Extract data from a corrupt workbook
- Use Replace... to remove unwanted characters
- Create custom functions using names
- Automate PivotTable creation
- Explode a single slice from a Pie Chart
- Create charts that adjust to data
- Hack chart data so that blank cells are not plotted
... plus 20 formula and function hacks and 14 macro hacks.Last but not least, several very useful hacks on connection Excel to other applications using XML and SOAP Web Services.
Overall, as the Hacks series has proved so far, O'Reilly continues with its tradition of publishing useful books and pricing them so reasonably that anyone who has paid the price of the product would do well to buy the book as well.
All Levels
Strengths: It is part of the O'Reilly "Hack" Series.
Weaknesses: Only 100?Excel Hacks by both David and Raina Hawley takes us up a notch when it comes to working with Microsoft Excel�. The only other place I've gone to are books by Microsoft and this one does a great job explaining in few words how some things work � such as Pivotal Tables.
There is no Appendix, but there is a short, very good Excel-centric Glossary preceded by 8 Chapters that divide up the 100 hacks in a neat organized manner, much like the book itself.
I got the book because I'm having to deal more an more with Excel tables and I have found that this book helps reduce the frustration level and the "A-hah" light kept kicking on as I found a few hacks I can use immediately in my work.
Some the Hacks I discovered were: Create Ranges That Expand and Contract, Create a Speedometer Chart, and the whole chapter on Connecting Excel to the World and getting it to work with XML.
Now a caution is in order for Mac users. A few of the Hacks are WinTel-only because they are workarounds using Virtual Basic for Applications (VBA). Others require that Macros be turned on. (You expected more from Microsoft?) But David and Raina Hawley are not exclusive and include the Mac-world into the fold by showing which hacks are Mac-capable or and indicate the few that are Windows-only.
Hey, you use Excel? Get the book that will help keep the migraines down. And who knows? You may be able to wow others with your new-found "expertise" as an Excel�guru!
How to Do More, November 23, 2004
Reviewer: Bruce J. Kratofil (Cleveland, OH) - See all my reviews
Microsoft Excel is an extremely powerful tool. Yet most users have only scratched the surface of its power, using only a small part of its capabilities.
Excel Hacks: 100 Industrial-Strength Tips & Tools by David & Raina Hawley, shows readers how to do more, and how to do things better, with the market-leading spreadsheet. The word "hack" here refers to its original meaning in computers. A hack was either a "quick and dirty solution" or a "clever way of doing things", and didn't refer to breaking into systems. This book presents 100 different hacks spread over eight categories, covering the basics; built-in features; naming hacks; pivot tables; charts; formulas and functions; macros; and connecting Excel to the rest of the world.
Individually, none of these hacks may cause you to run down the street shouting "Eureka", but together they should help just about every Excel user. I consider myself an expert user, working with spreadsheets for over twenty years and teaching classes in Excel and 1-2-3, yet I was still able to learn a lot from this book. In some cases, it was genuinely new information (Hack #50, Explode a Single Slice from a Pie Chart or Hack #99, Access SOAP Web Services from Excel). In other cases, it showed how to use a tool I knew about in some different way (Hack #41, Create Custom Functions Using Names or Hack #78, Construct Mega-Formulas). A couple of times, it served as a reminder to use some tool that I had been neglecting (Hack #6, Customize the Template Dialog and Default Workbook).
Some of the hacks are usability tips, showing how other tools (such as pivot tables) will be more useful if you lay out data in a certain way. Several tips help if you develop spreadsheets for others to use, limiting their capacity to screw things up. Sometimes, the hacks may just spur you to further thought, making you think "Gee, if you can use this tool to do this, maybe with just a little more work I can get it do that!"
The hacks are self-contained, so you don't have to read the book cover-to-cover. If a particular topic doesn't interest you, it won't hurt to jump ahead, or even skip a particular chapter. You don't need to type in long, complicated listings either. You can download the sample code for all the hacks from the authors' website. The authors do Excel training and application work in western Australia, and their website is crammed with more Excel material.
Who should read this book? The ideal audience is the broad middle class of Excel users. You shouldn't give it to a beginner, because they are still learning about the forest while this book looks at individual trees. Super power users, who may know ninety of these hacks already, won't get that much of it either, but they should be writing the books, not reading them. But for everyone in between, the book is sure to teach something you didn't know about Excel.More Book Reviews of 100 Excel hacks >>
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